Bamboo Light

Bamboo Light System (BLS) is an illumination system comprised of light segments that may be combined to build a personal type of lamp for each user. Thanks to BLS combining system, the same segments may be used to build floor lamps, ceiling lamps, and wall lamps.

BLS consists of five light segments (which come in two different shapes, one almost straight and the other one slightly curved), a transformer, and different types of supports according to the place where the lamp will be located.

Bamboo Light System was inspired by the observation of the use of bamboo in Japan. This wood is used for manifold purposes, yet the design is always elegant and simple. It may serve, for instance, to hold water, to mount scaffoldings, to build fences, or to make eating utensils.

In nature, bamboos grow upward duplicating their segments and expand by proliferating one beside the other, thus colonizing new ground. Their shape varies, and they may even be shaped like coils. From their lightness stems their resilience, and in their flexibility lies their strength.

In my personal experience, BLS results from the meeting of my two everyday creative endeavors - sculpture and design. Sculpture provides its formal freedom and its use of space; design supplies the tools to achieve the rationalization of the system and itsversatility - users can adjust their BLS to the place and space they have planned for it.

BLS is a tribute both to the first industrially designed object, the Thonet chairs, whose constructive simplicity and formal multiplicity I have adopted; and to Sculptor Isamu Noguchi, who designed in the post-war period a series of lamps made with paper and wire. Not only are these lamps greatly ingenious and formally simple, but they also convey a remarkable sculptural language.

By: Yamagiwa
Photos are by .Nacasa & Partners